Intellectual property has become increasingly more prominent as a business asset. For example, patent assets have received increased media attention as they have been the subject of business transactions, such as patent auctions, and contested matters, such as patent litigation.
The United States has seen an explosion in patent litigation lawsuits in recent years. For example, according to data aggregated by Lex Machina, Inc., of Menlo Park, Calif., in 2000 there were 2,281 patent lawsuits filed. By 2011, that number had climbed to 3,557. And, in 2013, a record 6,082 patent lawsuits were filed. Recent trends in litigation have also motivated renewed interest in trademark, copyright, and antitrust litigation.
Conventionally, attorneys, law students, legal professionals, etc., required access to various information when doing legal research, such as case opinions, statutes, and law review articles. Oftentimes, the information is stored in a variety of forms across a variety of different sources (e.g., hard copy materials, electronic databases) that makes research difficult and time-consuming. Access to more than one type or source of information is often desirable, if not necessary, before determining what actions to take. Although online legal research services, such as Westlaw® and LexisNexis®, have significantly improved accessibility of legal documents and legal information, they do little to make determining the proper course of action easier.
Online legal research services serve largely as electronic databases for legal and public-records related information. As such, they provide significant, but limited, value to those doing legal research. For example, an attorney that is researching strategies for a patent litigation proceeding in the U.S. District Court for the North District of California may have access to information through services such as Westlaw®, LexisNexis®, Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER), Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR), Electronic Document Information System (EDIS), etc. Yet determining what strategies are most likely to succeed in a particular jurisdiction, in front of a particular judge, or against opposing counsel, still remains ad hoc and instinctual.